


Erasures

by ERNest



Series: diagonal fall [1]
Category: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Related Fandoms, Wonderland: A New Alice - Murphy/Boyd/Wildhorn
Genre: Bad Dreams, F/M, Guilt, Memory Alteration, Refusal to Communicate, Unreliable Narrator, Willful Misinterpretation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-06
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2017-12-14 03:59:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/832467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ERNest/pseuds/ERNest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hatter learns that it is often easier to get rid of things than to return them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Carriage Return

She feels a burning in her stomach and it is the way Wonderland ought to be and all the ways it really is instead. But she can fix it all; correct the mistakes that have been made. And it’s not the people who are a problem; they are a part of Wonderland, and that’s a good thing. It’s just a word or two that doesn’t fit. That happens from time to time when there are generations of copies. The Protocol eases out of her like correcting fluid and rubs out the tiny thoughts of wrongness and then it only takes a twitch of her little finger to set the carriage return that helps them accept the change as normalcy.  
They’d thank her for it later if they could remember it.

“I feel all wrong,” she says, trying to explain the sickening feeling in her chest. “When their eyes go wide like pinpricks, I feel what they feel for a moment. I can see the world shaken and fallen on the ground in the shape of a crooked grin.” She sees it in her mind now, haunting her, but shakes the memory. “And then they forget, and I remember that I am the world that matters. Until the next time, when I wonder again.”  
He puts his hand on hers. “It’s not wrong, what you do. Sometimes a person just needs to be fixed, and then you should make it better.”  
She smiles. “What about you, Morris? Would you still be saying that if I did this to you?”  
“Oh, probably. You have your reasons, even if you don’t want to tell me. And if you’re changing me in the first place, you’re probably not about to tell me much of anything.” He shrugs. “Besides, how would I know?”  
“Right. How would you know?” This is not the answer she wanted, but she has to live now with what she put into his mouth.

She looks at him and all she can see is what’s missing. He will never be complete again because of the gift she gave him only to take it away. And he knows, but he doesn’t know, all at once, so she tries not to watch his slow breaking-down. She almost, almost, wants to return _that_ to him, so he stops looking at her so betrayed. But even if she wanted to give him a reason to hate her even more, she doesn’t know how to undo the damage. It seems that she can only take and take away and she’ll never put the world back together like _this_. She thinks about the possibility that if she can’t give back what is lost she could make a new memory instead. And then she knows that this is the one thing she can never do.


	2. Sick Day

She stays under the blankets for as long as she can, because it is warm here, and safe. In this cocoon, she can imagine that it’s already okay, that she’ll emerge as something beautiful. She knows that she isn’t, not yet, but she is something like approaching happy, and that is a thing worth having. She holds a breath – wool and shed skin and sunlight – and lets it out – moon and lungs and flannel. She is in place, as long as she does not face the day or give in to the night.  
A voice comes to her from a long way off. “Please come back. We need you to be here with us.” But it’s so nice where she is and people can be so far from nice, so she shifts a little and stays more firmly where she is. “You probably don’t care, but I need you to be here with me.” Pause. “I can’t do it by myself. I thought I could, for a long time, but it turns out that I’m just no good on my own. Please,” he says again and she stays still, thinking.  
She holds a breath – steel and shadow and twisted hair – someone needs her. She lets it go – teeth and _crunch_ and diagonal notes – she cannot even look at him. “Don’t,” she whispers, her voice crackling from disuse. “Don’t make me leave.” (Don’t make me hurt you, she really means).  
She can _feel_ his concerned gaze and tries not to smile at how he’s sure to be biting his lower lip, the way he pulls the skin inwards with beautiful teeth. “I don’t want you to leave,” he insists, “I just want you to be present.”  
He doesn’t understand that as soon as she lifts the covers from her face she will have to start packing, and especially if he’s right there. Despite everything, she feels tears force their way out from her eyes. She hunches up more, trying to hide, even though he can’t see her face. “Just go.” She will not let him invade the last safe place she has left. (That used to be him, she almost admits).  
He’s still here. She’d be able to feel his absence if he did what she said. “Right. Well, I’ll just go, then.” Even his words shuffle, and she did this, and that’s why she needs him to not be here. She doesn’t want to fight, that’s why she hasn’t moved yet. If she’s not careful she’ll get angry, and she’s done enough damage already. Finally the door clicks closed and she relaxes. She hopes she can get to sleep soon, because even the nightmares that stalk her mind would be better than this.


	3. Dreams and Ice

She doesn’t believe in much of anything, really. Tea is a state of mind, which is the only thing worth trusting. Anyone else can switch out your expectations, but your brain is your own. Okay, so maybe other people can’t trust their minds, and maybe that’s her fault, but she’s not about to feel guilty about it. They are there to adore _her_ and if they’re not doing a good job, she helps them. That’s all there is to it.  
There was that one time that has no reason to bother her as much as it does. There’s nothing she can do about that mind that cannot be trusted, besides pretend that it is not broken. It will keep him from falling apart even further and maybe she can stay something close to whole.

Some people have dreams of the future, but here in the Glasslands, her nighttime journeys are through a past done right. He never looked at her like that, or she never looked back, and there was no shame, just the way things always were, so she didn’t have to run. She smiles in her sleep-induced nostalgia.  
And sometimes when she’s even further lost into the world of never-could-bes, he did look and she did return it and they kissed gentle like snow and then fierce like a blizzard, but by the end of it they could see each other clearly and completely. The world was new and white and they were alone together for the first time, ready to take the first steps into a new world.  
She wakes up and curses herself for being such an idiot. The tears have frozen in her eyes.

The glass always makes her think of ice, even though it’s really no colder than back in Wonderland, and so she makes tea more constantly than ever. And of course that’s the only reason, nothing to do with something that has been lost, and not a broken glance that stands so clear in her mind.  
She uses the long-spouted teapot so when she pours she can watch the tea fall in a perfect arc, something smooth and unbroken. She wraps her fingers around the porcelain and gasps like a butterfly when it’s hotter than she expected. She raises the delicate powder blue to her lips and hides a grimace behind it. Mint shouldn’t taste so salty. 

She mustn’t lose sight of what she can’t have. It’s impossible, but she dreams of climbing into the corridors of his heart, where he will listen to her fears and whisper that she is alright. In her dreams, she always believes him, but she wakes up and of course the space next to her is as cold as it’s ever been. And yet, she holds onto the memory or the hope that he can stop her from melting like no one else could.  
She thinks of running to him and saying all the things she can’t stop thinking about, but he will only look back with that hollow gaze she’s seen so often and she will remember that he is somewhere she can’t reach. She mustn’t have what she will lose sight of despite her best efforts, so she needs to stop trying.  
“You’re okay, dear, you’re okay, you’ve done everything exactly right, so will you please, _please_ stop apologizing? I hurt you far more than you ever hurt me, and we’ve both been destroying ourselves, but it’s gone on long enough and now we can _stop_.” She wants to tell him, but he never stays still long enough to listen.

Everything that happened was her fault and everything she did led to something bad. Mostly, she couldn’t help it, a victim of circumstances, a slave to her nature. She tells herself that is not her fault that it was her fault, that this is the role she was designed to play and she would have been even more of a disappointment if she weren’t the catalyst for the ecstasy of entropy.  
But there is only one thing for which she is allowed to feel regret, because it was no one’s fault but her own. She cannot blame the event that made her, or the order of things fitting into place. It’s something she did to herself, something she did to him and if she’d just kept it like that, they might have worked through. But when she tried to make it better, she only made that recovery an impossible thing.  
She regrets that part of her mistake even more than the horribly ill-advised show of desire in the first place. This isn’t going to get better.


	4. Crowds

It is no longer an isolated incident: when she closes her eyes she sees him, and he is dying a different horrible way, but each time it is her fault. He chokes on his own blood after she stabs him with the knife that was a gift from him. When he tries to kill her as she deserves, her blood sears through his flesh. The mirrors she meant for the other Hatter are delivered to the wrong place and his scream reflects the agony in her own brain.  
This isn’t what she wants for him because he is too good for her. Really she wouldn’t wish this serial mortality on anyone, except perhaps herself. All she can do is stay far away from him so that he can stay in one piece everywhere but her murderous mind.  
This is why she trembles so much to see him standing in the archway to her courtyard as she sits near the chessboard. They link eyes briefly and then she rings a bell to summon all the fiends and rewrites in the Citadel. Their bodies will shield him from finding where she is.  
“Hatter!” he calls, peering over their heads, and she can’t possibly leave now that she’s heard his voice, but she does the best she can. She ducks down and weaves in and out of the mass of people so he never knows where she is. She’s too much of a coward to run away as completely as he deserves, because she wants to see him, even though she can’t.  
“Hatter, I need you!” His voice cuts through the babble of so many people who don’t know what they’re here for. She can’t help him because he wants to get to her and the best way to help him is to make sure he never does.  
It’s too late now, but it was too late the minute he appeared. He has reached the corner of the crowd and when she sees that he is choking on something, she can’t help but open her arms to receive him. He crashes into her and holds onto her waist like he will never leave. “I came because I had to see,” he says, every sob shaking him like a bandersnatch. “I’m sorry I didn’t ask first.”  
He’s hurting and it’s all her fault, so she returns the hug and rubs his back to help him calm down. “You’re okay. Morris, you don’t need to do this.” She repeats worthless words and they work. He’s quiet again, not crying or saying he’s sorry so maybe they can talk now. Maybe they can’t talk now, maybe never. He’s too still and the only heartbeat she can feel is the generator thrumming below her feet. “No! Morris, you can’t, please don’t give up.”  
A door slams and a young fiend stares at them with a white face. “Get out!” she snarls, because he’s in the way. She turns to say the same to all the congregants, but there is no one here but herself and the body in her arms. She falls slowly because she cannot bear her own weight and his. When she shakes him, nothing happens because that’s all that’s ever going to happen. She’s done all the damage she can, so if she kisses him one last time it will do no harm and she doesn’t care who sees.  
He’s gone like smoke before she gets near, and she blinks away the rest of this illusion. He is alive and he doesn’t need her at all and he’s far away and he’s safe and she’ll never see him again. That’s what the world really looks like and she needs to stop thinking it was ever any different.


	5. Chess

After, she does not go to the memorial again. It’s just one more place to remember meaningless battles, and now that they have escaped their pedestals to play torment in her head, she has to leave. She will not infect this monument with even more of her sickness.  
She sits alone in her room instead, playing chess against herself and losing. She moves the pieces almost without looking because she knows her enemy so well. Each time she captures a piece from the other side, she knocks over an image of red ink pooling at her feet, or the shadow of a child wondering why everyone is yelling. Whether she banishes something that feels like exiling a part of her, or lets it stay and rot at the inside of her skull, it doesn’t matter; either one hurts.  
She keeps playing chess and doesn’t ask for anything. The few times someone offers her food, she eats, but she doesn’t care either way.  
She loses sensation in her fingertips and manages to destroy an entire army while trying to move forward. This is no great difference from the path her life has already taken. She needs to get warm and she can’t because she doesn’t deserve to. When she slumps gratefully to the ground, she takes the other army down with her.  
Her cheek against the cold tile, she feels the world spin back into clarity. In a minute she’ll be strong enough to push herself up from the floor and get on with things, but she considers this a short reprieve. Sounds echo strangely up through steel and glass. Machinery clanks and she imagines a bird flapping its way to freedom. Someone runs through her citadel but they are far away and inconsequential by the time she focuses on the sound.  
This is as close to a dreamless sleep as she can come, and for once nothing hurts.


	6. Dirty Chai

The Salamander falls asleep wrapped around the curve of a kettle. It’s not nearly as lovely as darting through the flames themselves, but it is nice that they keep each other warm. He can be this close to something that makes them all this happy, and that’s a good thing. He dreams of steam and gears and all the perfect reasons for tea and living and he wakes when Her hand strokes his head, down his back and all the way to the tip of his tail. He is startled for a moment but stands at attention and bows. He doesn’t expect Her to laugh – it’s been so long. “No, you’re fine, sweet thing. Thank you for keeping our water nice.” Her face wrinkles and then smooths again. “Things are usually better with a warm body to keep them real and safe.”

Hatter almost never takes milk with her tea, because it dilutes the flavor into something entirely unrecognizable. Even chai, which most of the Fiends claim was _made_ to go with milk, she can’t do it. The flavor always looks so sad, drowning in something _other_. And besides, when she gets the good stuff, she needs the black pepper to bite her tongue. Thus prepared, she is ready for the cinnamon to sing on her next sip. Milk would only soften the blow, which is the last thing she wants. The sharp sensation is all she can feel anymore.  
Remarkably, she has not been abandoned, as she expected when she first left for the Glassland. Many people came along to help her build this Citadel and they helped where they could. Of course, none of them know what she has done to Morris. Why should they care, since she’s done similar to most of them? But she’s grateful for their ignorance, so when the Salamander who has been keeping her kettle warm asks for a creamer to go with his Earl Grey, she makes sure that one appears before the meal is over.  
She _does_ love the clouds that form when two things so unlike are combined. Something new blooms, changing every moment, but still always real. Somehow it makes her think of widening eyes, of teeth forming questions against her palm, and she has to look away. And then the liquid is uniformly warm brown, like that’s the way it’s always been. No one can prove it _was_ ever any different. She smiles and takes a sip. Everything is muted and too sweet in that way that milk changes things.  
She keeps the creamer on the table, because she _promised_ , but leaves it far away from her end so she does not need to look at it.


End file.
